Challenge Kick Off with Guest Blogger: Steve Kirsch!

The first post of the challenge comes from Steve Kirsch, a member at our gym, lover of heavy deadlifts and drumming, and general ‘real food’ enthusiast. He writes about his experiences with food on his blog, The Paleo Drummer.

Here is a message from Steve to all of the first-time challengers:

As someone who eats paleo/primal and has seen great results from it, I love when these challenges get lots of people to try this lifestyle. If you do it right, the rewards are great in terms of energy, body composition and athletic performance.

But the single most important piece of advice I can give you for a paleo challenge is: don’t get tied up in knots over the rules and technicalities.

There is a whole list of “No” foods — you know, grains, legumes, dairy, sweeteners, etc. — but why be negative?

You have a world of amazing food in front of you. You know really well, if you think about it, that 30 days of the “yes” foods is going to make you feel better. That is all you really need to think about.

On the other hand, if you *want* to delve into the science/nutrition/etc head-first, you can do a ton of research at a lot of websites. I have a (mostly) food oriented blog called The Paleo Drummer at http://thepaleodrummer.com. There you can find links to lots of other paleo sites. There are tons of articles about food, some recipes, even the greatest crockpot recipe ever. (I also occasionally use words there that might offend mom. Sorry.)

But the point is this: you don’t *have* to do anything but eat the “yes” foods for one month.

There are websites where you will see low-carb-versus-high-carb-paleo disputes, all-out war on how much fruit to eat, kvetching about whether you can heat up olive oil (you can; some people don’t; if you really care why, ask me and I’ll tell you, but it doesn’t matter for now), and other bits of hyper-minutiae.

These are the same people who can’t enjoy a baseball game until they master the intricacies of the infield-fly rule.

Don’t be like that. Just learn the basics for now… and they really are basic. “Yes” — an emphatic “hell, yes” — to to animal protein, veggies, fruit, nuts, seeds, water, seltzer, coffee, tea.

For these 30 days, just eat that.(Do you see sugar or artificial sweetener on that list? No you don’t. Don’t eat ‘em).

I leave you with this: Good luck. Have fun. Eat delicious paleo food. Only paleo food.